Good readers, especially those with an interest in history, will find The Inheritance a rewarding novel. It does not skirt the harsher aspects of life in a harsh era, so readers must expect to encounter the horrors of the Inquisition, the crude quality of medical education, even in Padua, the realities of disease, and the occasional violence of Miguel's encounters with his pursuers.

Miguel, for example, calmly summons his medical training to decide how to kill Camacho. He settles on a blow to the carotid artery and then strikes him "on his bobbing Adam's apple. Dropping on his knee beside him, he delivered yet another blow against Camacho's head." Even before page 20, we have encountered the burning of sixty heretics, the "loose" woman Angiolina climbing out of Miguel's bed, and a suicide attempt where an acquaintance of Miguel's has slashed his wrists, "two rivulets of dark...